The Present Age
by devilberry
Summary: "He knows a bad choice when he sees one staring up at him, red eyes glowing and lips parted ever so slightly, but he still lets that bad choice slam him against a wall in an alley and kiss him hard and fast." Malik and Bakura appreciate the finer things that come with living in such a fascinatingly modern time period.


_Thiefshipping! I'm very proud of myself that I can write them semi-in character now and that I've more or less gotten over my emo teen let's-kill-everything bullshit._

_Beware fluff, corny ending, love, and other horrible things. Also I fucking curse every fucking sentence. Fuck._

_I also had no beta whatsoever so whoops this is going to be all kinds of awful shit. Sorry not sorry._

* * *

Let's talk about the 21st century.

They both come from a dark, hot far away place. They're 3,000 years off, and that ruins them. Malik's body is all fucked up and scarred, and Bakura's was so decimated that it withered away and died and he had to get a new one. Ryou's skin is pale and soft and it has no scars. He's never seen hard work, the calluses on his fingers are from _card_ _games_, and the bruises on his knuckles are from Bakura. Bakura likes this body. It's so…young. Fresh and new and ready to abuse. Just like this new year he was brought into.

The modern age is also fat and dirty and Bakura could get used to this.

...

Malik likes motorcycles.

He likes things that are hard and fast. He likes being reminded of that day where he tasted freedom and kissed the sun. He saw an ad on TV and fell in love. Years of staring at old pieces of haunted jewelry gave him an attraction for shiny things. The silver paint that twists along the angles of the bike is sometimes too good to be true. The loud comforting _roar_ it gives. Malik likes loud noises. The tomb was just always so motherfucking _quiet._

He remembers stretching his legs and perching on a rock, looking out over a neverending landscape of nothingness. The taste of sand burned the back of his mouth and he thinks about the motorcycle he's going to buy, and how it'll take him so far from this place so quickly. He smiles, and tries to ignore how the action makes the scars above his cheeks ache.

After he finally got his bike, he almost killed a man with it. He still isn't sure if wanted to hit him or not. Regardless, he pulled to a stop and wished he hadn't been so fucking dumb.

Sometimes he rolls over in bed, and sees a white head of hair sticking out from underneath the blanket, curses his motorcycle, and wonders why he likes the damn thing so much.

...

Bakura likes cigarettes.

Part of it is just his lust for wanton destruction. He likes the knowledge that these innocent little white sticks burn and they burn hard. They pollute and destroy and by the Gods, Bakura can relate to that. They taste so terrifyingly awful that they're delicious, and he loves the feeling of poison seeping into him.

Well not _him,_ per se. And maybe part of it is, as a thief, Bakura loves to steal. He steals precious moments off the end of Ryou's life with every inhale. The lying and cheating can only poison the innocent little boy's soul, so Bakura needs to leave a physical reminder. Even if the tiny angel makes it out of this, even if he gets rid of the demon living inside of him and haunting his bones, he'll remember. He'll be 60 years old and tucked away on a nice gurney, breathing through a tube, and he will remember the spirit that was a fucking _part _of him.

And, just maybe, part of it is in the fire. He has a small collection of lighters, some of them live in his pocket and some on Ryou's desk. Every time his thumb flicks over the end and a little flame sparks into existence, it's so _familiar_ to Bakura. He smokes cigarettes because at the tip of every one is a little piece of his village. He lets the smoke corrupt and destroy and burn him. He was the only survivor. He needs to remember that.

But most of it is in the look twisted into a tan man's face when he receives a breath to the face of murky gray fog. _I heard secondhand smoke kills too, Bakura_. and Bakura will smile right back, give another big exhale, and say, _let's hope so, darling._

...

Malik likes the clothing.

He always goes out of his way to take a metaphorical shit on his father's grave. Growing up he was taught to cover his skin, and hide his shame. _Especially the back, Malik. That is a sacred place._ And Malik always wore his big ugly robes and figured out the hard way why the words "sacred" and "scarred" are made up of the same fucking letters.

When he broke out of that damned-by-the-Gods prison, he took the robes off. He found something with color in it. He found something tight and small and found something that showed off long expanses of bronze skin. A purple top to match his eyes and black pants to match his soul. Or something like that.

He likes being outside of the tomb because he can dress however he wants and it's not a sin. No one will care because they all dress like filthy sluts too. Malik decides that it's great to live in such a modern world because people don't have to time to care about who prances around in tiny lavender tops and who doesn't.

He feels comfortable in his shirt. He likes the way dark eyes trace around his abdomen when he stretches out like a cat in the sun, feeling warmth and lust wash over his belly.

He likes the attention. It suits him.

...

Bakura likes holograms.

Maybe he only likes them because they remind him of the past, so maybe it's not very modern of him. He remembers the huge monsters and the vicious battles and he remembers splashing blood all over the sand, so he smiles a bit to himself every time he places down a card and a life-size version of his beast pops up. It's a comforting sight to him.

He can't help but find technology relentlessly interesting. Society has come so far since sandy hills and dark caves of years past. Though, sometimes when Bakura throws down a small card with a picture of a monster—a monster he'd _known_, personally—and it springs to life on a playing field, he realizes that human kind has had a damn long time to advance. And then he laughs, because they're still fighting over silly huge creatures and old dusty pieces of magical jewelry, and after all this time they've decided not to move forward at all and just walk around in circles instead.

Seto Kaiba's strange devices remind him of how much time has passed. He realizes that these amazing three dimensional pictures remind him of home in some demented way, and they also remind him of how long he's been away from it. Bakura's sadomasochistic like that.

Malik once said that the holograms are superfluous. _They just feed Kaiba's ego, really. They're so unnecessary._ But Malik doesn't understand. He's not three-fucking-thousand-years-old. And he doesn't even _want_ to be reminded of home.

...

Malik likes television. (Bakura doesn't.)

When they're not plotting evil or creating chaos, Malik watches the news. He's perched on the edge of his bed in their shitty-motel-room-turned-villainous-lair and watches with serious focus lacing the edges of his purple eyes. Murder, arson, rape, war, kidnapping, drugs. His focus stays stuck on the screen regardless of what story they're airing. Hell, one time Bakura saw Malik's eyes glued to the TV set when they were airing a story on _abandoned puppies, _for fuck's sake.

Bakura never really asked about it, because he doesn't give a shit about what Malik does or anything. He'll just pick out a cigarette, light it, and go to join Malik on the filthy mattress. Sometimes he sits close enough so that their thighs touch, and most of the time he doesn't. He blows smoke in Malik's general direction just to piss him off and they just sort of stay there.

_I like to be informed on what's going on with the world, _Malik says out of the blue one day. Of fucking course that's what it is. Bakura should've guessed.

Bakura kind of freaking despises watching the television. It's a waste of time and he doesn't care that Malik thinks they should be patient. _Sometimes you just have to wait for a plan to work itself out, Spirit, _he'd say,_ you of all people should know that._ They can be productive and patient at the same time, damn it.

(Also, Bakura decidedly does _not_ like to be informed on what's going on with the world. He doesn't have the time to look up all of the fucking _going-on_ he's missed.)

His somewhat irrational hatred has _absolutely nothing _to do with the fact that the first time he saw a television, he asked Malik about the _little people trapped inside the box_, _and shouldn't we be worried about them overhearing us?_ and Malik had laughed at him.

...

Bakura likes not being dead.

Coming out of the shadows and into Ryou's body was like taking a breath of fresh air for him. He wasn't exactly sure what kind of strange limbo he was in, locked up inside the Ring. He never knew if he was dead or alive. He thought for a very long time that the big dark room was his own personal Hell. He hated it.

When the Pharaoh first trapped him, he wanted nothing more than to just _die._ He wanted to stop sitting in the dark, cold and alone, and just not think anymore. At all. Ever again.

Because he had the time to think. And he thought about everything. His family, his friends, his village. He'd squeeze his eyes shut and try to turn his brain off and do anything but think of fire.

(he always did)

And he spent a lot of time contemplating his revenge. His dejection turned to determination, and he was going to make the Pharaoh _pay_ no matter the cost. No matter how long he had to wait. And by the Gods, he waited.

And now, here he is. Alive and kicking and very much not dead. He's got a body to run around in, though it's far too small and too pale. (_he doesn't think of Malik and how tall and lean and muscular and _tan _the other man is and he doesn't think of how he'd love to occupy Malik's body and run around the city in that fucking purple cut off shirt and maybe how he'd like to control Malik in other ways and really _occupy _his body and fuck he has to stop this)_

He's even in the same goddamn _town _as the Pharaoh is now, and he's just sitting around and forming plans and waiting to strike. Bakura is an absolute master at waiting.

It's not so miserable now, anyway. The waiting. It isn't as horrible or as lonely as sitting in the Ring for three thousand years, so he doesn't really mind it. Domino City isn't as cold or as dark, and there are always so many people around him.

And one of those people who is tall and infuriating and maybe Bakura likes the feeling of their mouths sliding together and their hips bumping and their skin crawling all over one another's, reminds Bakura of how _not dead_ he really is.

...

Malik likes being alive.

Tombs were not meant for living in. Tombs were meant for dead people, not wide-eyed bright little boys.

It made him all hollow and broken on the inside. He felt like he was suffocating all the time, and the underground air was hot and stale and he didn't even realize how oppressive it was until he was almost-all-grown up and he tasted _freedom _for the first time. And then he literally got a stab to the back for it. He was fucking empty.

(Maybe Malik and Bakura have too much in common. Maybe they both know loneliness too well, and they've both spent far too much time alone in dark rooms.)

His childhood was awful in a very unique way that most people can't even _begin_ to understand. It was all desperation and sand. After he left the tombs, he felt like a drowning man gasping for air. He felt free.

He felt like he could actually start living.

And sometimes he thinks he maybe lives too much. He rides a motorcycle too fast and too dangerously. He steals. A lot. More than he needs. He tells himself he's being a bit of a Robin Hood, _stealing trading cards from the rich to give to the poor,_ but that's just fucked up. He's a little indulgent. He really doesn't even care that much. He owes himself a little indulgence, damn it.

He's reckless and wild and _crazy (_fucking crazier than he thinks he is, even though he should've realized something by now) but he can't bring himself to care that much. He knows a bad choice when he sees one staring up at him, red eyes glowing and lips parted ever so slightly, but he still lets that bad choice slam him against a wall in an alley and kiss him hard and fast. He lets it ride on the back of his motorcycle and bite his neck. He takes it in, and rips all of its clothes off. He lets himself like it all too much. He lets it fuck him into a shitty motel mattress. Because you know what? He can.

He's alive and breathing and he's reminded of that fact every time he inhales some of Bakura's cigarette smoke.

...

Maybe, just maybe, Malik likes Bakura.

And maybe Bakura doesn't mind Malik all that much either.

(maybe.)


End file.
